1 Adapting to Corona. Remote interactions at IIAS

IIAS webinars: A new experience

Willem Vogelsang

Every two weeks or so, the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) organises a lunch lecture at which one of our fellows, or another interested speaker, presents the developments of his/her research to an often very lively and interested audience. The atmosphere is informal, which stimulates the discussion afterwards. And of course, we provide a free lunch, which promotes a general feeling of well-being. At least, that is what we used to do, until the middle of March, which is when the corona pandemic reached most of the world, including Leiden. We were forced to cancel all in-house gatherings, and like so many other organisations, we switched to online meetings: the ‘Webinar’ entered our vocabulary

Sometime in the middle of May, we set up a series of online lectures by our fellows, on a wide range of subjects that reflect the diversity of Asian Studies as promoted by IIAS: from aerial navigation in precolonial India, the position of Pakistan in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, to the migration of Baluchis from Iran to eastern Africa in the nineteenth century. Lisa Caviglia extraordinary circumstances: a global pandemic that has enormous repercussions the world over. Whilst the experience has been unsettling for all, I became acutely aware of the privileged position I was (and am) inhabiting in this context. The stillness that progressively accrued as of March 2020 felt like a wave that was gradually slowing down and quietening the idyllic landscape that Leiden has to offer. It almost seemed to mock us with extraordinarily crisp weather and intensely blue skies. Despite bubbling fears, a daunting sense of insecurity, the dramatic reports on the news and from family and friends in particularly affected areas, I felt a sense of relief and gratitude for still being able to own some agency and freedom of movement; long urban and countryside walks characterised this time. I began to build a very intimate relationship with the city and immersed myself in my project

I am working on an illustrated ethnography based on life narratives collected during research with South Asian women in Europe. My attempt is to visually depict how, both at ‘home’ as well as abroad, gender, class, racial violence and oppression, but also astonishing strength and resilience, characterise their lives. The time at IIAS allows me to experiment with the embodied forms of research and analysis that creative methods afford. With this project I attempt to understand how illustrations might benefit the research process and output, all the while trying to find out whether pictures might offer an opportunity for joint know-ledge production; can those researched be more involved and intervene upon the researcher’s interpretations? At the same time, I am monitoring the drawing process. Does it enhance my comprehension of the life experiences I depict? Many questions remain, and more will ensue, offering further opportunities for reflection as the project evolves.

Beyond my project-related investigations with visual tools, the new landscape afforded further opportunities for embodied research and self-reflection, which – even if somewhat tangentially – spilt into the above. My own, very mild, experience with seclusion during

We use the Kaltura system, which is supported by Leiden University and has proved to be a reliable medium and easy to use, not only for the organisers, but also for the participants. The webinars are opened by a moderator who welcomes the participants, introduces the speaker and explains the ‘rules’ of the game. All participants can use the chat module to type in their questions during and after the talk, and the moderator selects a number of them to put to the speaker. The talk itself takes some thirty minutes, which is then followed by a Q&A.

For the speakers who are interested, we offer a course specifically designed for this period made me think of the lives of the women involved in domestic work with whom I spent a significant amount of time over the years. Many frequently complained about the long hours of confinement required to fulfil household chores for their employing families. Most are left with only one day a week to let loose. I wondered how this new normal was affecting them; what happens when even that one day disappears? Did it make their sense of isolation even more intolerable? Or has their labour (unwittingly) trained them for these circumstances, making the shift unnoticeable or irrelevant to their lives? Whilst I was not able to investigate these questions in much detail from afar, from some of the conversations I was able to have remotely, these conditions and perceptions appeared to coexist. Could the current situation allow me to tap into anything that might resemble their

people who find it difficult to talk in front of a camera. Our fellows are taught how to present themselves, look into the camera rather than read from a written text, be aware of the physical background and the lighting. It is fantastic to watch how professionally some of them present themselves after attending the course and learning some basic tricks.

In general, the system works well. On average we have some 100 participants that log in for each lecture. The questions that are typed in and passed on to the speaker are often very to the point, motivating the speaker to elaborate on the issues raised. We do not know what the future will bring. We would like experience? The short answer is ‘no’, of course. I have not had – even in these extraordinary circumstances – even so much as a mild taste of what their lives might be like. Only the stories from my family in Italy gave me an inkling that could get me closer. Whilst blessed with scenic views of the Mediterranean, cast on the backdrop of sharp green hills, their lives suddenly became characterised by a level of restriction unknown to them to date. As the months went by, I sensed that isolation was progressively altering their mood.

I observed that the underlying fear in the Netherlands, that it “might happen here as well”, was also affecting my behaviour. Daily drawing sessions were interrupted by frequent outdoor activities. I would storm out of my flat to walk, think, walk – again and again. The speed and suddenness at which other countries had shut down compelled me to get in as much of the to re-instate the in-person talks, but only when it is safe again. Even then, we are seriously considering continuing the online webinars as well, to attract a worldwide audience and help our fellows make new contacts.

Information

Our upcoming webinars are announced at www.iias.asia/events Previous webinars can be viewed on our Youtube channel (‘Asian Studies’): https://tinyurl.com/YT-AsianStudies

Willem Vogelsang, Deputy Director

Picture this: Visual methods and migrant lives between Asia and Europe

My time at IIAS has coincided with

Above: “A good friend told me the confusion should be bigger”. Left: “Get out before it’s too late”. Images by Lisa Caviglia (2020)

International Institute for Asian Studies outside air as I could. I felt a sense of urgency, “tomorrow might be too late”.

Drawing this now makes me realise how life in the past months has been about the micro, the particular and the reiterated, and alas it was (almost) never boring. Forced to slow down and dig deep, I got to know the small details of a new place and how they are navigated by the people who live in it, which might not have been possible with a more outward-looking lifestyle under normal circumstances. It has allowed me to see very clearly what I have always appreciated about ethnographic research: getting to know.

Textiles on the Move: An online meeting

From 6-9 October, IIAS organised an online conference entitled ‘Textiles on the Move’. Not only could the conference be attended by people from all over the world, but we are now also able to share the digital recordings with you on our website. These will be publically available until 15 November 2020.

A (minor) victim of the COVID-19 pandemic was the IIAS conference ‘Textiles in Motion & Transit’, which had been planned to take place in Leiden in October 2020 and was organised together with the Tracing Patterns Foundation in Berkeley, California, and the Textile Research Centre (TRC) in Leiden. A Call for Papers had been circulated, some 80 lecturers from all over the world (from a total of more than 200) had been selected and invited, and a fringe programme of workshops, displays and demonstrations had been set up. Unfortunately, it all had to be postponed, probably until the middle of next year.

We subsequently decided to organise an online conference, on the same theme and around the same time, with some of the confirmed speakers. We did so in close collaboration with the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and using the advantage of an online event, we opened participation to anyone interested, worldwide. To share even more broadly, we also decided to make the recorded online sessions available via our website as soon as possible after the conference. in colonial India Joppan George

As the world began to be gripped by the pandemic, arresting everyday life to the confines of home, this webinar hosted by IIAS offered a measure of relief in reaching out to the world outside my window, thereby bringing together, albeit remotely, scholars and avid enthusiasts of the history of aviation and the princely states. Participants logged in from locations as far and apart as Kansas and Kochi, offering a rich variety of questions and comments, encouraging me to look into scarcely accessible work and prompting me to make connections with books in the making. This was the first in a series of webinars that helped rekindle our scholarly fellowship and expand the dialog more democratically under lockdown.

While this thoughtful and timely initiative to maintaining a scholarly community under the duress of the global pandemic continues to keep alive the foundational directive of open exchange of ideas at IIAS, it also attests to the undiminished spirit of camaraderie around the world.

Above: Final discussion – 7 October. Top f.l.t.r: Christopher Buckley (convenor and roundtable moderator), Lee Talbot (presenter), Barbara Köstner (roundtable participant). Bottom f.l.t.r: roundtable participants Zvezdana Dode, Zhao Feng and Eric Boudot. Left: Morrocan/Japanese women’s kaftan; collection Textile Research Centre Leiden.

The theme and title of the virtual conference was ‘Textiles on the Move’. The programme focused on the role of textiles beyond their primary function, namely to provide warmth and protection. Textiles and clothing also speak volumes about the hierarchy of power relations among their users, and they may act as repositories of spiritual power that can be tapped into by following the correct rituals and prescriptions. These meanings and values of textiles are culture-specific, often unspoken, but fully understood within a given tradition. Due to their portability, however, textiles regularly move to and pass through foreign places. On these journeys and in their new environments, they often lose their original values, acquire new significance, and/or communicate altered messages.

The ‘textiles on the move’ concept was used to explore the lives of textiles—their displacements and transformations—within the Asia-Pacific region as well as between this region and the rest of the world. During the conference, scholars investigated the materiality, the making, and the use and reuse of textiles outside the context of their original cultures. In broad terms, they looked into the agents that facilitate textile movements, the forces that contribute to accumulating new meanings, and the circumstances that allow these transformations to take place. One entry point of discussion was the global trade network that resulted in so many

The webinar

In the long march of the history of India in the 20th century, from under the constraints of the colonial yoke to the postcolonial pastures it promised itself, the princely states managed a vanishing act. Variously called the Native States, Indian India, and the Indian States, the princely states formed about two-fifths of the area of the subcontinent and one-fifth of its population. Colored yellow in the colonial maps, in stark contrast to the pale pink of British India, the princely states under the personal rule of the princes were also under the suzerainty of the Crown. In the webinar Princely Airs: Aerial navigation and the question of sovereignty in colonial India, I traced the interest that the princes had in aviation since the start of its career in India circa 1910, their oft-forgotten initiative of the gift of airplanes for imperial defence during World War I, and their continued involvement in interwar aerial navigation in the British empire. cultural exchanges, as in the case of the trade between South Asia and Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, but also in Asia itself, between Indonesia and India. Fascinating in this respect is the spread of the (in)famous buteh motif from Iran and India, which in the West became known as the Paisley motif, named after the Scottish town with the same name. The same motif can now be found in Indonesia, but also on men’s underwear from America and women’s wrap-arounds from Zanzibar.

The programme of the virtual conference included a series of different contributions, including a roundtable discussion, two video recordings, various brief presentations on a plethora of subjects, and even a recorded guided tour of a museum exhibition on the kimono, in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In almost all cases, people could join in and discuss the subject of the talk with the speaker(s). The conference also included two key-note speakers, namely Sumru Belger Krody of the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.) and Dale Carolyn Gluckman, former Head of Costumes and Textiles of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and former senior consultant to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok.

Please feel welcome to switch on the recorded sessions of the four-day online event, and enjoy listening to a roundtable

If the presentation of airplanes as machines of war served to highlight the fealty of the princes to the imperial cause, they did not shy away from exploiting the potential that aviation held in store. In representing India in international fora such as the Imperial War Conference and the Paris Peace Conference, the princes had found themselves adding luster to their prestige. The Government of India, tasked to forge aerial regulations in keeping with the provisions of the international aerial convention under the remit of the Paris Conference in 1919 and with an eye on the imperial commercial gains, found that the exercise of policy-making often exceeded the legal ambit of aviation. The government’s administrative and legislative vexations were not limited to drawing up the aerial routes but extended to the constitution of airspace, the law of the air, and the question of aerial rights. In the interwar years, as Britain began to develop its imperial skyways from London, via Cairo to Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta all the way to Darwin, the princes galvanized under the aegis of the Chamber of Princes to demand that their concerns be addressed or the government risk upstaging the imperial aviatic plans.

Most urgently, aerial navigation complicated the extant understandings of imperial sovereignty in the mosaic of colonial geography, where the territories of the princely states were often contiguous with those of British India. Aviation unsettled the traditional dimensionality of the concept discussion on new directions in Silk Road studies (with Zhao Feng, Director of the China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou), or a lecture on Javanese textiles in the Thailand court, or a talk on prayer rugs and their changing meanings. Another subject that was covered is the production of a seventeenth-century nightgown produced in India and its context within the broad global trade network between East and South Asia, and Europe. Or, you may be interested in the development of specific textiles in the French Provence that are based on seventeenth and eighteenth-century Indian chintzes. And what about a video of the production of kantha covers in northeastern India, or a talk with the title ‘Textiles with two parents’, about cloths that combine two completely different traditions, such as a Moroccan wedding curtain embroidered in chikan work from Indian Lucknow? These are just a few examples. The world of textiles is indeed highly fascinating and reflects many aspects of human life and the worldwide interaction between users and producers.

The online conference was attended each day by some 150 participants, and the general appreciation of the varied and lively presentations augur well for future online conferences. IIAS and its partners, in the face of future travel restrictions, were fortunate of having the opportunity to learn enormously from this conference. Its formula of an interactive programme with relatively brief items, a moderator for the day, and the possibility for participants to ask questions, offers hope and inspiration for future events.

Information

The recorded sessions will be available to watch until 15 November. www.iias.asia/ events/textiles-move

The convenors

Sandra Sardjono, Director Tracing Patterns Foundation, Berkeley

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, Director Textile Research Centre, Leiden

Christopher Buckley, Wolfson College, Oxford

Willem Vogelsang, Deputy Director at the International Institute for

Webinar 14 May 2020 Princely Airs: Aerial navigation and the question of sovereignty

Asian Studies, Leiden of territorial sovereignty, which began to assume the characteristics of volumetric space extending into the air. For an airplane leaving England to arrive at its destination in Australia, the Government of India had to maintain both its expansive aerial routes as well as their relations with the princes. The need to accommodate the imperial arrangements of aerial navigation within the structure of the governmental provisions in British India without upsetting the princely order remained a contentious issue in the political deliberations. The question of empire-wide aerial mobility offered the princes a template to articulate their discontent of the treaties and engagements that bound them to anachronism and irrelevance. In the opinion of the architects of the resurgent princely order, the colonial Indian treaty map was in dire need of revision. The quest for this revision inflected the law of the air in India as the princes staked a claim to their aerial sovereignty. The webinar explored how the compromise between the Government of India and the princely states tilted the scale and scope of aerial navigation in the interwar years.

Joppan George, IIAS Fellow, historian of modern South Asia with a keen interest in exploring the transformations of colonial society under the impact of science and technology. www.iias.asia/profile/ joppan-george

Crafting a Global Future Kyoto, Japan 24-27 August 2021

The global impact of COVID-19 is enormous, and the world of Asian Studies has not gone unscathed. We cannot but ask ourselves if the pre-pandemic way of working is future-proof. Taking the meeting side of Asian Studies (workshops, lectures, conferences, etc.) into consideration it is clear that we will have to scale down the number of physical gatherings. Although disruptive to the advantages of personal contact, there are potentially several benefits to this as well. Firstly, less air travel means a reduction in CO2 levels. Secondly, virtual meetings open up new possibilities to those colleagues and institutes hitherto unable to shoulder the costs of travel and accommodation involved in face-to-face meetings. With the improvement in quality of online meetings, these have become both feasible and bearable.

The ICAS vibe

I might be prejudiced, but I believe that (small) gatherings of specialists can more easily become virtual, since they aim to consolidate and expand their acumen within a certain discipline, and do not expect to transcend borders of disciplines and regions. They tend to work within their own welldefined areas of expertise. However, anyone who has ever attended one of the ICAS biennial meetings knows that ‘the ICAS vibe’ is the result of the multiple interactions between participants, who are open to engage with others beyond their own discipline or region, and also to interact with the (human and natural) environment of the particular location in which that year’s conference is being held.

Virtual elements are not something completely new to ICAS, since we have streamed opening sessions before. But, future editions of ICAS will aim to incorporate many more virtual and hybrid elements (combining in-person and online characteristics). At this very moment the ICAS team is studying the various ways in which to ensure a vivid and highly interactive hybrid conference format for ICAS 12. My hope for the future is that the lines between physical and virtual presence will increasingly blur, to the extent that presenters, participants and organisers will not remember a time we did things any differently.

The Olympics of Asian Studies

Nevertheless, currently people still have the desire to meet in person; this was made abundantly clear when we closed our submission lines for ICAS 12 at the beginning of October, and were blown away by the sheer numbers: nearly 1200 proposals were submitted, involving around 2000 potential participants. We had definitely not expected this level of optimism and enthusiasm in the current state of the world! Of course, we will have to see what is possible come the summer of 2021, hopefully many travel restrictions will have been lifted by then, but we do intend for ICAS 12 in Kyoto to be the first post-pandemic large Asian Studies conference!

The results of the submission reviews will be communicated to all relevant parties per email before the end of 2020. Since the registration fee for both physical and virtual attendance will be the same (hybridism comes with a price tag) you can decide whether to participate in person or online at a later stage.

Shamsul A.B., the local host of ICAS 5 in Kuala Lumpur (2007), unforgettably referred to ICAS as the ‘The Olympics of Asian Studies’. And now, by chance, ICAS 12 will coincide with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which was postponed by one year. ICAS certainly does not convene to break records, but we definitely aim to create an event that facilitates as many human interactions as possible, across disciplines and regions, so as to inspire border-transcending interdisciplinary ideas. ICAS never only involves academics, but also other practitioners such as artists, artisans, musicians, museum curators, librarians, civil society representatives, advocates, and many more. Additionally, ICAS always connects with the citizenry of the place in which it is held, with the aim to share the knowledge on Asia with the local community, but also to benefit from the local knowledge on Asia. For ICAS 12 in Kyoto, this knowledge abundantly resides in its great culinary, garden and craft traditions, just to name a few. The motto of ICAS 12, ‘Crafting a Global Future’, was not casually chosen!

Stay updated

As preparations for ICAS 12 advance, and as we observe the developments of the pandemic, we will be continuously adjusting our programme, accommodating any and all possibilities and global restrictions. To stay informed, please make sure to add yourself to our mailing list and receive our ‘ICAS Matters’ updates. You can subscribe here: https://icas.asia/forms/mailinglist

Paul van der Velde, ICAS Secretary and IBP General Secretary

The ICAS Book Prize 2021

Alongside the astonishing number of submissions for ICAS 12, we have also been observing another recordbreaking interest in the ICAS Book Prize (IBP). Each year the number of titles rise!

The IBP was originally launched to bring a focus to academic publications on Asia; to increase their worldwide visibility, and to encourage a further interest in the world of Asian Studies. Organised every two years, together with the ICAS conference, the IBP has grown from a small experiment, to one of the largest book prizes of its kind. Along the way, we expanded to include, in addition to the English Book and Dissertation prizes, prizes for publications in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

The English language edition is the most mature, and naturally receives a substantially larger number of submissions. But the other language editions, still in their infancy, are proving to be worthy contenders. Each language edition has its own secretariat and sponsor. The intention is to create sustainable and lasting partnerships with secretariats and sponsors who make the prize ‘their own’. You can find all details on their respective pages online: https://icas.asia/icas-book-prize-2021.

This year we have added yet one more prize to the group. Organised and sponsored by the Society for Hong Kong Studies (SHKS), the newest addition to the ICAS Book Prize family is the IBP for Best Article on Global Hong Kong Studies. According to the prize’s description, scholarly articles in any social science or humanity discipline are eligible as long as they take Hong Kong as the primary subject of inquiry. SHKS particularly welcomes articles that place Hong Kong in global, comparative and theoretical perspectives. Although an entirely new format for us, we find this to be a timely and exciting category. We have no doubt it will attract a large number of article submissions in the coming months.

We feel strongly that the various language editions can grow into substantial Book Prizes, just as the English edition has done. For that to happen we encourage our readers to take part, spread the news, motivate colleagues and peers to submit their publications! Winners receive not only substantial cash prizes, but also invaluable exposure and credibility, and potentially a trip to the winners’ stage at the ICAS conference. Please join us in strengthening and developing the various IBP language editions, as you have successfully done in the past for the English instalment.

We look forward to seeing you all in August 2021, whether at the live opening of ICAS 12 in Kyoto, or online in our ICAS 12 virtual environment.

Sonja Zweegers, Secretary of the IBP English language edition and Editor of The Newsletter.

The deadline to submit your books or dissertations to the English language edition of the IBP has passed. However, you are still able to take part in the other language editions.

The deadlines are: 1 Dec 2020: French language edition 1 Feb 2021: Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish/Portuguese language editions 1 Feb 2021: Hong Kong article prize

Submission instructions: 1. Go to https://icas.asia/icas-bookprize-2021 for the guidelines. 2. Create an account here https://icas.asia/user/login 3. Log in to your account. 4. Select ‘your’ language 5. Click on the button ‘Submit publication’. 6. Fill in the form and click on ‘Save’.

The secretariat will follow up per email with instructions for shipping hard copies.

Questions can be sent to ibp@iias.nl or to the relevant language secretariat (find contact details online).

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